Crash and Burn
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [anime-verse] The stories of Flint and Volkner, from their youth in the hard streets of Sunnyshore till adulthood in their newly rebuilt world.


**A/N:** Written for the Multiple POVs Challenge on the Pokemon Fanfiction Challenges Forum. Despite the name of the challenge, all chapters will be in third person POV (albeit omnipresent). They'll just switch between Flint's perspective and Volkner's. An anime-verse fic that covers the young Flint and Volkner around the time they met until Ash's arrival on scene - possibly with a few modifications from the given backstory.

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**Crash and Burn**  
_the story of two boys who rebuilt their world_

**Chapter 1  
Flint: The Searing Sun**

Sunnyshore was a rough place to grow up, especially when you had no support. Flint was lucky he had Chimchar; most children on the streets didn't have a Pokemon around. Most of those were guaranteed to die before they grew up.

Flint did feel sorry for them, but the streets of Sunnyshore were too harsh for anyone to play the hero's sword. Chimchar and he could barely defend themselves, and it broke his heart to see the little bony kids begging for food or protection. Most of the time he had nothing to spare; most food he found went to Chimchar, to keep up his strength. And he couldn't spare Chimchar; Chimchar was the only family he had.

He had been a present from his late father: a pokemon to match his name, he'd said. A flint that just needs a spark to light – and Chimchar was that spark: the flaming fist he threw at his enemies to defend himself, and the warmth he pulled in when they were alone, hungry and cold.

But Flint was sure he could become something great with Chimchar by his side. One day, when they were stronger and had driven the gangs out of Sunnyshore, they'd rule the world together. They'd set the sun on fire.

In the present, the sun seared with a different kind of fire. The fire which burnt skin, which parched throats and which led the many gangs of Sunnyshore to quarrel at the few taps and fountains they could reach. Houses were, mostly, off limits to them; they belonged to the wealthier people of Sunnyshore, the people who could afford the roofs over their heads, who held the reigns of debt and could stomach the sight of countless ants crawling on the streets below. There were few honest people in those houses; they chose to make their fortune elsewhere. It was only the crooks, the gamblers who strove for a quick buck, and the weak who remained; with the unforgiving sea on one side and some of the strongest wild pokemon living in the grasslands on the other, there was no easy escape.

Everyone needed to survive. When the sun beat them down, they crawled to the few taps that were outside: taps that were a part of houses that had crumbled or been knocked down, or taps that had been for the parks and beaches that had once lived. The park was still there: run down benches, rusty metal that had collapsed upon itself…complete with huge chunks bitten off by a stray gible. The beaches were gone though: they were just clumps of sand lining the unbecoming shore. And the sea water wasn't drinkable; it never was. Not to humans anyway, and not to anything that wasn't a saltwater pokemon. And few people caught those pokemon in Sunnyshore; electric types, both amongst trainers and in the wild, were all too common. It was like asking for a beating. Few people even went to the shores nowadays.

When Flint realised he had be tough to survive, he went. Chimchar and he battled with the sea, and those salt water pokemon. Because, like water was weak to the electricity that fried the once lively Sunnyshore, fire was weak to the water that had waterlogged its shores. To get stronger wasn't to burn the kindle grass; it was to force the torrents of water into submissive steam.

And with Chimchar's red hot flame toughened up by battling the waves, Flint was safe. He wasn't a name on the streets: little kids with a single Pokemon didn't become names on the street. But he could hold his own. Steal food when he had to; fight for it when he couldn't. And Chimchar could keep the gangs and wild Pokemon at bay. They were mostly magnemite, who couldn't stand up to Chimchar's heat.

It was only a problem when they ganged up, those gangs. One, two, even three magnemite were no problem for Chimchar's ember. But gangs weren't groups of three: they were six or seven, or even more. Flint hated that. He knew he could win on a one-on-one fight; he knew _Chimchar_ could win. But when they all circled the tap like that, he knew he needed to take a beating to get something down his throat.

His red hair tussled with the wind as he slouched, matching their stance. The magnemite cackled in the air. Chimchar's flame shivered. The gang teens grinned.

'We ain't giving our water teh little kids,' one smirked, his face marred by a scabbed scar near his jawline and layers of grime. They were all like that: scraped up, dirty, and selfish. Because nobody cared. Nobody had time to care. If you were in a gang, you had that gang. If you weren't you were on your own.

Flint was selfish too. He knew the taps didn't always work, whether because of the tap itself, the plumbing or some blockage elsewhere. But it was the only way to get drinkable water when it didn't rain – and it hadn't rained for a week. He and Chimchar _needed_ that water. No matter the others needed it too.

They'd probably taken their share before him, but in this world, when you had an advantage, you kept it. You never let it go. And they had the tap; they could take the water they'd need another day and leave the other wanderers with nothing. Often, it was the rain or sympathy that saved those who'd been driven to fever and hallucination from lack of it. Sometimes, it wasn't even that. Sympathy was a few drops of water which couldn't really be spared – but no matter how harsh things were, there were some who simply couldn't stomach the look of death.

But Flint was fine for another day or so. And he didn't live of sympathy. When he could, he gave it. Rarely food or drink. Never Chimchar. But sometimes he came across other scraps he could pass on to those who needed it more than him. But none of that mattered now. What mattered was that he got _his_ water: for himself, and for Chimchar too.

'I'm taking my share.' Flint threw on a feral grin and Chimchar pounced.

Fire collided with electricity, and the air between them surged with power. Flint felt the stings on his skin from both and his hair recoiled – never neat, but never as wild as in the heat and shock of battle. Chimchar's flame grew bright like the sun that battered them from the sky, and only the magnemite with their steel-clad eyes could bear to look.

Flint didn't need to look. He just battered his way through the boys as his pokemon did the magnemite. Both of them felt the punches they received, and more, but they were burning. Fire burnt steel. The moving burnt the still. Chimchar's ember set stings towards the teens as well, creating the opening that let Flint fill half his container with water before it got knocked out of his hands with a punch to the guy.

By some miracle, it had landed right side up and only a little had splashed out. But greed was a risk worth taking; a full container would have lasted him a lot longer than a half-one; he'd be praying for rain again in a couple of days, or swinging bruised up fists for another shot.

They made their escape, Flint limping a little but sprouting a cheery grin, and Chimchar hanging on to his shoulder. The gang didn't bother chasing him; the half-container they'd lost was nothing compared to what they would lose if they left their little watering hole. The magnemite were seared, but no so burnt they couldn't fight some more. Most kids had magnemite, or elekid, or a water type; none of them had the advantage of Chimchar.

They snuck into their shelter: a place that used to be a quaint little flower shop once upon a time. There'd been a few flowers too, but flowers didn't agree well with a fire pokemon, and Chimchar's flame had reduced them to cinders. The place now wasn't much to look at; it leaked every time there was rain, and heated up when there was only sun. But it was shelter. It was a place that the wild pokemon didn't enter – though the passing currents did sometimes charge the tins up. It was a place that would become as cold as ice if it snowed – except it never snowed in their little corner of Sinnoh. It never really became winter; it was just sun and storm, fighting one another in the skies for dominance.

But it was home. Their home: Flint's, and Chimchar's. They had their few odds and ends hidden there: a few coins they'd picked up off the streets or swiped, a broken pair of thongs he was still trying to fix, a spare shirt, some strips of cloth for their scrapes, a little blanket for Chimchar. People didn't bother stealing from the shelters; they didn't bother running them over. There were plenty of places to take shelter in Sunnyshore, all of them as derelict as each other if you weren't a part of the higher crowd. The only time a shelter was in danger was if you really pissed somebody off – but that rarely happened. Everyone was hard and crass on the streets, but the real bad guys were the ones who had their thrones and all the cash. And the rats on the street weren't too much of a threat to them.

But those rats fought with each other, and became stronger. Flint scrubbed his bleeding knuckles with a bit of saltwater as Chimchar rubbed some ash onto his own. Neither of them were wasting their drinking water; they wet their throats the moment they were sure they wouldn't gurgle down the entirety of their rations – they'd been running low, and it didn't look like rain was going to be coming for them that day. The tin was too hot. Chimchar didn't care at all; the heat was his element. Flint, after living like this for a while, was getting used to it too.

They were sore, exhausted but triumphant, lying on the dirt ground together and staring at the peaks of yellow sky through the cracks in the tin. That was their home; that was Sunnyshore, the rough and tumble place where the best of them were on the streets and the worse in their cosy little houses – but it was hard to envy them with that feeling of satisfaction in your chest; it was easy to remember when looking up at the washed out room and the crumbling roof. But it was going to change. They were both getting stronger; they'd both continue getting stronger, fighting anyone and anything that crossed paths with them for things less valuable than water. When they weren't desperate, when they weren't simply trying to live, they'd grow. And they'd grow from the bottom right up to the top.


End file.
